{"id":3858,"date":"2011-12-20T10:08:54","date_gmt":"2011-12-20T15:08:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=3858"},"modified":"2011-12-20T10:08:54","modified_gmt":"2011-12-20T15:08:54","slug":"the-hens-arent-retired-after-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=3858","title":{"rendered":"The hens aren't retired after all"},"content":{"rendered":"

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My hens abruptly stopped laying back in the summer after two years of laying strong. I had no eggs at all during August, September, October, November, and much of December. I still have a great deal to learn about chickens. The only theory that I could come up with was that they had already reached henopause, so now I would have to support them and pasture them, as promised, for their remaining Golden Years.<\/p>\n

But then all of a sudden, in the last week, they started laying huge, beautiful eggs. I am mystified. The only theory I can come up with is that they cannot tolerate hot weather. I have definitely found that my chickens, types that are said to be cold-weather hardy, are much more uncomfortable in the summer than they are in the cold of winter.<\/p>\n

By the way, I am down to two chickens — Patience and Ruth. Chastity died during the summer. I have no idea why. She was fine in the morning when I let them out, but I found her lying dead in the grass during the afternoon. It was not a hot day. There were no signs that any kind of predator was involved. Chickens, I understand, sometimes choke to death. So that’s the only theory I was able to come up with.<\/p>\n

During my eggless months I bought a dozen eggs only once — good eggs, supposedly, from Whole Foods. I almost threw them out because they were so pale and pathetic. Clearly, if you want good eggs with deeply colored yolks and great flavor, they’ve got to come from pastured hens.<\/p>\n

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My hens abruptly stopped laying back in the summer after two years of laying strong. I had no eggs at all during August, September, October, November, and much of December. I still have a great deal to learn about chickens. The only theory that I could come up with was that they had already reached … Continue reading “The hens aren't retired after all”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","category-sustainable-living"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3858\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}